grateful

I was feeling it today. Kinda waddling without a bounce in my step. Sore from false pains that don't indicate much. Sleepy, yet at work hoping for as much time with my baby as possible. I was pretty productive all morning ignoring the weird stretchy belt tightening pains. I was grateful that I could keep going. My boss called me in for a "quick" meeting before this big CISCO staff awareness day.

Back story: One of the other managers planned this event about a month ago and she talked about making it fun for everyone by having a potluck. The idea was to give everyone else a better idea of our partnerships with CISCO Systems and show their telepresence videos. CISCO supports the division quite a bit and we'd done a similar event last year so I was completely oblivious to what they were pulling over on me. My only skeptical remarks were to J saying I was surprised that we couldn't use a portion of the CISCO money to just buy food in lieu of having a potluck. Little did I know that he was egging me on asking questions about the event and the pasta salad I was making knowing all along how oblivious I was. I still can't believe he was able to keep the surprise.

Back to today: I'm sitting in my boss' office getting mildly nervous that he was going to make me late for our staff meeting. He eventually said why don't we both go up. We open the door, my heart starts to race, and I realize that I just brought pasta salad to my own baby shower! They completely surprised me! I am still floored by how generous and warm everyone is, and how lucky I am to be part of such a great group of people. They had chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting! They had egg salad sandwiches in the huge spread of food! They made a gigantic diaper cake with over 60 diapers, outfits, socks, and blankets! Big highlight was one of my favorite people made Aiden a handmade quilt from a pattern titled "Daddy, who hung the moon?" I just love it. I have tons of new clothes to nest with... I have thank you notes to write - I just wish that I could express how grateful they really make me feel.

I'll post photos soon...